Extreme Kitchen Makeover for under $150

Don’t let a small budget stop you from beautiful design! Check out the kitchen renovation that we managed for under $150!

When my husband and I purchased our first home, it was a complete fixer upper. We spent six years renovating including gutting our kitchen all the way to the studs as well as replacing the floor twice. All of this was while we had three small kids under four.

It was basically a hot mess nightmare.

So imagine my surprise when we started searching for our forever home and my husband fell in love with yet another fixer-upper. Specifically, one that needed a complete kitchen renovation.

Knowing how much work and cost that goes into a complete gut job, I decided to start thinking about what could be done in the meantime on a shoestring budget.

Kitchen Makeover Before and After

After all, the kitchen is functional, just really ugly. I needed to make it look better, not necessarily function better. I decided to visit some of my favourite places for inspiration-Pinterest and Varage Sale.

I am completely obsessed with Varage Sale and I love using it to get great quality used goods at deep discounts.

Varage Sale lets you follow certain boards so you can get alerts when new items are added. You can also ‘watch’ items to be alerted if they lower in price. I like visiting the home renovation material category quite often and I stumbled across a great deal on white paint, which inspired my kitchen renovation.

I was able to secure a deal of four litres of paint for $10. All the paint was Sherman Williams, so I knew it was high quality. There were two full and one half full tubs of ‘bright white’ and one full can of ‘cloud white’.

I wasn’t super fussy with the exact shade of white for the cupboards. Since they had already been painted a creamy beige, I knew that any shade of white would brighten the room. I also did not worry about sanding or priming since the cupboards already had been painted by the previous owners.

Painting the cupboards was a big job but there is just something so satisfying about painting something bright white and making it shiny and new. With each brushstroke I could tell that my kitchen was going to look bright, clean and fresh. It made it so worth it.

When painting, I always try to keep my brush strokes even and my coats light. I hate seeing drips and inconsistency in painting. These cupboards had previously been painted badly so they needed lots of coats to even them out and get a nice finish.

I made sure to take the time to remove the cupboard doors to really do a nice finish. Do it once and do it right!

A Kitchen Makeover on a Budget

I decided to change the hardware on the upper cupboards only. I think that this is a great way to save money if you want a change without breaking the bank. I wanted to do something a little fun and different so I ordered these yellow birds online from Aliexpress.

Ordering from China directly was a great move for me because it saved me quite a bit of money and gave me about five weeks to get my nerve up to start this project!

Taking on the fridge

My next step was to take on painting my fridge and stove with chalk paint. Take a look at how I took on the challenge here.

DIY Countertops

The countertops in my kitchen were always a point of contention for me. They seemed to have some hints of orange and pink mixed in and it just screamed ‘1991’. I really wanted to get rid of it.

I researched different DIY methods. I had seen lots of videos where countertops were painted, but I was hesitant to add chemical paint to a food prep area.

I stumbled upon some contact paper specially made for countertops during one trip to Walmart. It was a marble design which is night and light and perfect for my decor. A single roll, (I ended up needed two with lots to spare) only cost $9.99 so it was perfect for my budget!

Contact paper can be finicky to work with. You need to make sure to get out all of the bubbles and to match your patterns and seams. The good news is that I found this contact paper to be easily repositioned.

A Range hood Makeover

Another area I tried to makeover was my range hood. Looking back, I would have address this first since I had to tape off the area and the paint still spilled through.

At first, I tried to update the range hood with my leftover black heat paint from my fireplace makeover but I ended up wrecking the finish and was left with streaks and bumps.

I decided to use the Rustoleum Stone Effects since I couldn’t do a smooth finish and I love the result! It was a cheap and beautiful fix!

How to Whitewash a Backsplash

The before and after with the countertop was really dramatic. But once the countertops were done I realized I needed to change the backsplash. As much as I loved the stone, it just no longer looked right with the counters.

Luckily, I still had that extra can of paint from the VarageSale buy. Yes, I am that cheap that I refused to shell out extra money. I mixed equal parts water and paint and kept a rag on hand in case of any drips as I had already covered the countertops. Once again, if I knew I was going to whitewash the backsplash I would have done it before the countertops. Learn from my mistakes!

I kept my whitewash to one light coat as I wanted to see the variation in colour in the stone. The backsplash was probably my favourite part of the whole makeover. It didn’t take long, cost any extra money and looked fabulous.

Painting the tile floor

This was by far the worst part of the whole process. My tile floors were in really terrible condition so I wasn’t too worried about wrecking them with a little paint, but the process was horrible.

I started the process by sweeping, vacuuming, steam cleaning and hand scrubbing the floor. Once I had removed as much grime as possible I painted one thin coat of paint.

How to buy paint for less

I had bought some pretinted paint from Walmart for the project. By choosing a pretinted colour I was able to save myself about 50 percent. The colour I choose was called Sea Spray and I choose it because it was a neutral blueish green I figured would go well with most colours.

The hardest part of this project was keeping the floors clean between coats of paint. I have three kids, a dog and a cat. It was damn near impossible.

Once the paint was dry (I gave it overnight) I used a stencil from the dollar store and some leftover cupboard paint to add a stencil detail.

Once it was completely dry, I liberally applied four separate coats of Rustoleum concrete coating. I had purchased this for another project, but then decided I was actually meant to paint my kitchen floor.

I love the way my floor turned out but it did not hold up especially well. I have touched up and added four more coats since.